Language of Intimacy

   Greetings readers and classmates, welcome to my second language and literature blog post discussing the importance of a person’s home language.

   During the class discussion, we discussed several topics on Amy Tan’s essay ‘Mother Tongue’ and the topic language of intimacy was discussed for a great amount of time. I decided to discuss this topic even further with this opinionated post and describe my views that I was not able to share during the discussion.

    As Amy writes her novel called ‘The Joy Luck Club’ she realizes the importance of her mother’s ‘broken’ English (language of intimacy) in her life. As you may have known, a home language is the type of language that you would use or speak with someone that you have a close relationship with, most of the time it’s family members. If I were to give a definition it’d be 

A language that is spoken amongst closely related group of people under the influence of one’s culture and personal experiences. 

Based on people’s experiences, a home language is usually a merge of 2 or 3 languages and it wouldn’t mean anything when spoken to other people outside the ‘home’ because in order to understand it, you need the previous experience that would make what you are  saying make sense. It is confusing but if you have a language of intimacy you’d understand. I have a language of intimacy, it is a merge of Indonesian, English and Malay, only spoken between my younger brother and myself.

    What happens if this language of intimacy is used in the outside the house? This is the case with Amy Tan’s mother and her ‘broken’ English. I’d put the blame on culture because as an immigrant, Amy’s mother was raised in a different culture and speaks a different language obviously. It certainly affects people’s perception of her and thus leads to her not being treated fairly. I’ve heard that Chinese people and their culture usually stick with them even though they are immigrants because it is very strong and widely known today as with Filipinos, they are able to adapt to other cultures easily due to the fact that their culture is not as strong when being compared to the Chinese people? (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xjhdSrgCPI)

   Anyways, what I am trying to say is that culture and language is very heavily linked. They have a negative relationship, the stronger the culture therefore the weaker the adaptability level.

Culture (An Introduction)

    Hi, my name is Andrew and I will be turning 16 in 2 months. I moved to Abu Dhabi when I was 8. It wasn’t easy but so does learning how to speak English at that age. To this day, my English speaking skills is still not as fluent as most of my friends at school but I’ve never felt excluded from a certain culture due to the bizarre number of people from different countries and different cultures that experienced the same transition in their lives. Language plays an important role here because it is the only way of communicating ideas between people from different cultures. When being exposed to different cultures, people change due to their ability to adapt with their surroundings and the use of language, the only way to communicate with one another.

   In this multi-cultural country that we live in, a conversation would usually include “back in my country, we call that _______.” or “where I used to live, we do it differently.” these quotes refer to a person’s culture where they used to live or where they are from. I believe that a culture is a society that follows certain acts, customs, ideas and rules to maintain their way of living. Each culture has a distinctive way of doing things, other cultures might find it somewhat unusual but others might have the same ideas and an altered interpretation. For example, I have an interest for music, I can play the guitar, drums, bass and the cajon. In this world we live in, not everyone listens to the same type of music. People’s music taste sometimes relate to their cultural difference. In my opinion, music is just a language that expresses ideas in a culture or community in a slightly different way and again each culture have their own ways of expressing ideas and customs whether it is through music or sacred rituals.

   At the end of the day, my idea of a culture is very similar to Renato Rosaldo’s, it is something we learn or born into.

“Culture encompasses the everyday and the esoteric… culture is all-pervasive.” -Renato Rosaldo